What am I doing here?
by Hoperising13
Summary: Beth is alive. Her eyes flutter open and she wakes to darkness.
1. Chapter 1

He sees signs of her everywhere. A flash of golden hair from behind the trees, a fleeting jingle of bracelets in the distance. But it's not just signs of her that he sees, everywhere he looks, she's there. She's there as a reflection in the stream as he goes to fill his canteen, he stares until the still water ripples her image away. She's there silently watching from the forest as he takes his shift on watch, he throws rocks until she becomes hazy and fades. She's there gazing at him from across the fire, light flickering gently across her face, he quickly stomps it out, leaving the camp in darkness. Soon she starts to talk to him, whispering goodnight into his ear as he falls asleep, leading him with sweet words of encouragement to sources of food and water. He thinks he might be going crazy. He knows he is going crazy.

Tension in the group is high. His tension his high. Bonds are straining, the group is weakening. They can't go on like this. Someone leaves water out for them. Tensions run even higher. Then there is rain. Water pours from the sky. Beth stands in the middle of the road, blonde hair soaked, clothes dripping with water. He stares at her, stares and stares until thunder roars and lightning flashes in the sky. When he looks back, she's gone.

He thinks he won't make it through the night, thunder and lightning crashing, wind whipping, walkers growling.

He fixes the music box. That damn music box with the ballerina that looks like Beth. She sits next to him, singing softly to the tune all through the night. And when the sun rises, he gives the music box back to Maggie, she needs it more than him. She doesn't have Beth with her.

Beth is there leaning over his shoulder, smiling shyly, as Maggie and Sasha lead the man in, lead Aaron in.

Beth whispers into his ear, _trust this man._ But Daryl doesn't trust this man, doesn't trust this Beth, no matter how real she may seem, no matter how much he wants to believe she's real, that she's alive. But she isn't. She isn't alive.

Beth is alive.

Her eyes flutter open and she wakes to darkness. The air in the trunk is stale as she chokes in a breath full of it. Panic settles into her as she struggles to breathe. She breathes shallowly, breathing but not getting any air. She mutters out a weak cry for help, but no one comes.

She traces the lines on her wrist, trying to soothe the panic in her chest. She is strong, she knows it, knows that she has a strong will to live, to survive. She won't be dying today. Beth surges her body up against the trunk and when that doesn't work she punches at the tail light until her hands are red and raw and the tail light is off. She pushes her arm through the hole and crowds her face as close to the opening as she can, taking in as much air as she can, as much light as she can. Occasionally something up against her arm. Beth passes in and out of consciousness. When she next wakes it is to blinding light. Voices murmur above her as she wheezes out a weak cry for help. She is picked up from out of the trunk, sun warm on her body. The person carrying her jostles her roughly as they run, groans and gunshots echoing behind them. Beth sees a man, a doctor her mind says, checking her pulse as they rush her down a hall on a gurney. She sees the floor as someone prods at the back of her head and the aching in her head turns to numbness as the hole in her head is stitched first in the back and then in the front. She lets her tired eyes slide shut. Carefully placed in a bed, people whisper of miracles into her ears. She hears groans and then screams and then silence. And in the silence she dreams.

The group goes to Alexandria and Daryl goes with them. He doesn't like it in Alexandria, can't like it, not without Beth, not when all that they dreamed about was finding their family and being safe and, well, here he is, safe and with his family, but not with Beth. But he stays, still he stays, and when they are ready to leave, he will be there, more than willing to abandon the sinking ship that is Alexandria. And then the horse dies and he finds himself saddled with friends, friends who care about him, friends that are good to him, and make him feel hopeful, and he thinks to himself, _maybe I can go on_. He's asked to join Aaron's recruiting team, and he thinks to himself, _maybe I will be okay_. He's found his family, they've found a home, he's found a home, a home with friends, but he hasn't found Beth, he won't find Beth, because Beth is dead.

Beth dreams. She dreams of a boy, more man than boy yet somehow still. She dreams of a little girl with soft sweeping curls of hair. She dreams of love and family and beauty and hope. She dreams of depravity and immorality and faithlessness. She dreams of death, of flesh eating monsters, of a world torn apart and filled with chaos. She dreams of apocalypse, of Armageddon, of end all.

Beth jerks awake in a hospital filled with white walls as stark as the sheets tangled up between her legs. The still hands on the clock on the wall reads twelve, zero hour. The monitor besides her beeps steadily. Her hands tremble, clutching at the rails of the bed tightly. She lets loose a breath, it was just a dream. It was just a dream.

She tries to call out, her voice rasping after not being used for so long. She calls out, this time her voice scratchy yet in working order. She calls out again. No one answers. She rips the IV out of her arm, keeping in a pained cry. The world is hazy as she gets up, as she pulls on the clothes that were lying on the counter, as she stumbles down the hallways. The hallways are empty, lights flickering on and off. The wall is firm under the palm of her hand as she uses it to keep herself upright. Groans echo down the hallways and somehow she knows that she needs to avoid the source of them, whatever that source may be. She stumbles down twenty-five flights of stairs, shoving through the jammed door on the first floor. Bodies are scattered across the floor of the lobby, torn to shreds, red splattered against the walls. Beth carefully makes her way around the bodies, occasionally tripping over one. Her palm presses against the inoperable sliding door as she rests her full weight against it. A sigh escapes from her mouth, exhaustion quickly catching up to her. She searches the room- twice- before finding a stray gun lying under the reception desk. The gun's safety is switched off and as she weighs it in her hand, eyes closed, a memory comes back to her. It's blurry but she can still see herself and a boy, a friend her brain tells her, running in front of her. She is firing the gun at something, something just out of reach. She fires once, twice, before the glass shatters. She lightly steps through the remains of the door, walking out into the day. The sunlight blinds her and she shields herself from it with the back of her hand. Her vision adjusts and the image in front of her comes into focus.

Beth stands in the center of a parking lot, hospital standing tall behind her, her eyes widened in horror. The sun's rays shine down brightly on her as she looks out past fences at a wasteland, the city is in ruins and she can see fires off in the distance. Everything is abandoned from the cars in the parking lot to the buildings around her, not a soul in the world out there. Some animal out past the fence look up from eating something off of the ground, her mind tells her not animals. They lurch to their feet and the decayed corpses stumble up against the fence, hands desperately reaching through, their groans echoing across the cityscape. The sun shines down on her as Beth mumbles.

"It wasn't a dream."

 _No_ , her brain whispers, _it wasn't_.

Daryl's motorcycle roars to life as he pushes off through the gates of Alexandria, Aaron in the car behind him. It's been three months since Beth died, three months without life and light and love. And as Aaron and he scour the lands surrounding Alexandria looking for signs of life, any signs of life, he can't help but feel as though he's waiting. Waiting for her.

She is different from other people.

Beth quickly finds that the rotting corpses don't mind her, in fact, they welcome her. They are curious, like animals, shambling over and bumping into her gently. They become her friends, welcoming her into their folds. After all, it isn't like there's anyone else for company. She adjusts to their grunts and groans and the smell of their rotting flesh and when they move away from the hospital, Beth goes with them, exploring the city inch by inch. And everything is alright.

But it all changes when they find a person. A little girl, with soft brown curls and blue eyes, and all she can see is the girl from her dreams. The walkers shamble over to the girl, their groans turning excited. The girl's eyes are wide in fear and Beth wants to tell her that it's okay, that they are friendly, that they won't hurt her. But they do, they do hurt her. They grab the girl, ripping into her flesh as the girl lets loose a wild scream. Maybe it is Beth that is screaming. She tries to get to the girl, tries to save her as they tear her limb from limb, but a mass of bodies surround her, all trying to get to the little girl as well. Blood runs down the cracks in the concrete and pools at Beth's feet. Beth yells at them, she screams and rages but all they do is look up at her, pieces of flesh hanging from their mouths before turning back to their meal. When it's all said and done, the walkers leave the little girl, torn to pieces, eyes still open in fright, and shamble away. Beth stands amidst the dead bodies as they croon goodbyes at her.

She drops to her hands and knees, taking in deeps gasps of air, and stares in horror at the torn flesh. Her friends leave and she is glad. She knows now what they truly are. That they are the monsters from her dreams. Beth rocks back and forth, blood stained hands clutching at blood stained knees.

"I thought, I thought that-"

Her voice cracks and tears start to flow down her cheeks and fall as droplets, mixing in with the blood pooled around her.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry-."

Beth whimpers softly, clutching at the dead girl's hand.

"Judy, I'm sorry."

And that's how the man, Morgan, found her. Morgan had been her only company for the past two months as they made their way to DC and now, finally, they were there. They stand on a hill overlooking DC. Beth beams at the city, DC, one of the few memories she has is of it. Or well of a spoon that says DC on it. She reckons that that must've been where she was headed before. Before everything. Before waking up in the hospital, before the strange hole in her head that Morgan says is a gunshot wound, before shit hit the fan and dead people, walkers, started eating the living. Beth fiddles with the straps on her backpack before unsheathing her knife and sliding down the crest of the hill, Morgan following closely behind. She stabs the occasional walker that comes for Morgan as they make their way through the outer limits of the city. Everywhere she looks there is chaos and destruction and death. Shop windows shattered, walls telling of doomsday, bodies littered on the streets. Her heart still aches each time they pass a mutilated corpse, innards ripped out, but she does her best to harden it and move on. Just because they're dead doesn't mean she is.


	2. Chapter 2

They make their way around the edge of the city towards the suburbs, finding a small two story apartment complex, front windows smashed in, door to the stairs wide open. Quickly clearing out the few walkers inside, they set up camp on the rooftop. Beth gathers all of the paper she can find and anything else that is easily flammable before setting up a fire. Morgan's voice rings out across the rooftop.

"Girl, you gon get us killed with shit like that, it attracts too much attention."

She smiles sweetly back at him.

"Well, I mean, if you would rather freeze to death, then I guess that's your choice."

He laughs, one of those full belly laughs and her brow furrows, it reminds her of someone. She can't remember who, but someone important to her. Waving a hand, he continues.

"No need to sass me, go on then, build your damn fire."

The fire is warm against her as she stares into its flickering depths. The glow from it spreads softly across the rooftop, illuminating Morgan as he stands watch across from the door onto the roof. She smooths out the lumpy pillow that she found in one of the apartments and rests her head on it, drawing her blanket up tightly to her chest. Even with the warmth of the fire and the blanket she is still cold. Morgan says it's because she's got no meat on her bones, but honestly, Beth just thinks that she's cold blooded, like a crocodile or a snake. Thinking of snakes makes her sad, she doesn't know why but it's one of the many things that do nowadays. She can't remember a time when she wasn't sad, she knows those times exist, they must, but she can't remember. Can't remember any damn thing about her life before except her name, Beth, and the fragmented puzzle pieces of her mind that she just can't seem to get to fit together.

Daryl takes down a walker and goes to pull his arrow out when he sees it. A glow in the distance, the glow from a fire. And walkers sure as shit can't make fires. Which means people, survivors.

Then there's a body ripped apart and a lady tied to a tree, guts eaten. So maybe he gets a little sidetracked from their whole recruiting mission but Aaron doesn't say anything so he thinks he's all good. And he's hot on the trail of whatever psychopath did this shit when it goes cold. It's as though the person just up and vanished, no sign of what happened or where they went, no tracks to tell him the story. And he wants to give up, but something tells him to follow this through, to follow his guts, that he won't regret it. So he follows his gut right into the heart of DC.

Morgan and Beth slowly pick their way from building to building into downtown DC. They are scavenging on different sides of the street, sorting through the trash in the stores to see if there is anything of use. Beth finds a pack of unwrapped gum, mint flavored, two pennies dated 1998, a box of Band-Aids, and a half-empty bottle of Advil. She's going through the clothes section when she hears a muffled groan from the bathroom. Cautiously, she unsheathes her knife and opens the bathroom door. A walker is lying on the floor and as it reaches up towards her, she can see its slit wrists. Her own wrist aches. Beth rubs at it for a moment before leaning over the walker and stabbing it in the head. Its weak groans die off and she is left in silence. She can hear paper rustling in the wind as it blows down the street and way off in the distance she hears it, the unmistakable shuffle of walker steps, of hundreds of walkers shambling through the streets. Her heart jumps out of her chest. Morgan. She has to get to Morgan.

Beth rushes out of the store and watches in horror as hundreds of walkers round the corner and all shuffle towards Morgan as he digs through a trash bin one block down from her. This wasn't supposed to happen, _shit happens_ her mind says, they cleared the area. Angrily, Morgan knocks over the bin and the walkers start to shuffle a bit faster towards him, their groans turning excited. She has to do something. She has to think of something. She paces in short steps, trying to think before throwing her hands up in the air. She doesn't have time to think, she has to take action, now. Pulling out her gun, she fires into the crowd of walkers between her and Morgan. Startled, he looks up, quickly taking note of his situation. She waves her arms over her head, shouting as loud as she possible can.

"Hey assholes, over here!"

A few of them start to wander over to her and she easily picks them off one by one with her gun. She's busy firing into the crowd, trying to get their attention, when she hears Morgan shout something to her. The walkers turn back to him. She can't hear what he said over the noise of the walkers pre-feeding frenzy but she responds anyways, waving her arms at him.

"Get out of here! I'll find you later!"

She fires back into the crowd again, yelling profanities at them, and with relief she notices Morgan scurrying away down a side alley. Now, she just has to keep the stupid things distracted until Morgan can get far enough away.

Daryl is examining what he thinks could be the start of the trail again when he hears a girl yelling and then gunshots. Trail forgotten, he rushes down the street towards the noise. The first thing he notices when he rounds the corner is that the girl has hair like Beth's. The second thing he notices is the herd of walkers, maybe fifty strong. He hears the click of an empty gun and the girl angrily tosses it to the ground before resuming to wave her hands over her head, yelling like a crazy person. Before he knows it, he's hauling her over his shoulder and taking off back down the street from which he came, walkers close behind him. The girl is kicking and screaming as him but he ignores her, first he has to save their lives. He turns onto a side street and a ladder drops down from a balcony and Daryl smiles, Aaron's right on time.

He slides her off of his shoulder and shoves her up the ladder, following right on her heels. Jaws snap at his feet as Aaron hauls him up onto the balcony before pulling the ladder up.

Daryl is so mad. He roughly grabs the girl by the shoulders and shakes her hard.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? You trying to get yourself killed! God damn it, what the fuck is wrong with you!"

Aaron places a hand on his shoulder and Daryl realizes that he is shouting, drawing in more walkers. The girl is staring at him, like he's something she can't quite place. It makes him uncomfortable. He turns back to her.

"What!"

She stares at him, blue doe eyes blinking slowly. He stops breathing. It can't be. It's not, she's not real. He lets out a choked breath and falls to his knees. It feels as though he is underwater, sound just barely reaching his ears. He hears the snarls of the walkers below them and Aaron asking if he's alright. He hears the sound of his own voice murmuring her name.

"Beth."

His head hits the wrought iron floor of the balcony and the last thing he sees is slight recognition in her face as she crouches over him, worriedly, before his eyes slide shut.

Her heart feels all fluttery and funny. She knows this feeling is familiar, that this man is familiar, that she knows him, that she feels safe with him. Her head aches as fragmented memories rush back to her. They come faster and faster and she struggles to see what they are, to comprehend them. Black spots dance in the center of her vision. She sits, drawing her knees up to her chest, and clutches at her head. Her head falls back against the brick wall gently and her eyes flutter shut.

Aaron throws his hands up in the air.

"Well shit."


	3. Chapter 3

It all started on an island. A perfectly nondescript island in the middle of the Pacific, nothing at all remarkable or special about it. Privately owned, it was off the radar of most of the world's governments. But on this unremarkable island something quite in fact remarkable was happening, work on the cure for death.

A little girl with wavy brown hair and soft brown eyes watched as her father, a lead scientist working on project Playing God, took the cure first. The recording were sent every week to her, documenting the progress of Playing God. She watched as the cure first worked on microbes and then mice and then monkeys and soon after her father was telling her that the project was approved for human trials. In his last transmission, he explained that he could never test on humans without testing it on himself first. She would never understand why (until one day she did). What could compel him to test something on himself, something that could have negative side effects, could even kill him, and leave his daughter all alone. The little girl, only six years old, watched as her father locked himself in his room and stabbed a needle full of the cure into the vein in his arm. She watched as his forehead grew red and sweat dripped down his face. She watched as he called out for her dead mother. She watched him die and be reborn as something entirely different, something entirely inhuman. She watched him shamble back and forth in his room, grunting and groaning. She watched as he decayed into a rotting corpse, soon unable to even groan. She watched as men in white hazmat suits fired shot after shot at her father, until finally he was still. And without her father, without her knowing that this was all real, that daddy wasn't coming back, not ever, the project went on and the cure was reworked into something new, yet not all that different from the old.

They came in droves from the slums of cities all over the world, having been told of a cure-all by shadowy figures leaning up against brick walls. Sworn to secrecy, these people, these test subjects, said good bye to their families, promising quick returns. They were led down brightly lit hallways to brightly lit rooms and laid on tables covered with stark white paper. A large silver canister stood next to each table, filled with the precious cure. And as the breathing mask was being lowered over their faces, they took in one last deep breath of air. The masks sealed over their mouths and slowly their eyes would drift shut. They were woken up to blinding lights being shined in their eyes, men in white hazmat suits checking their vitals.

And it worked, these test subjects, they were faster and stronger and healthier than ever before, and everything was alright.

But it didn't work, not truly. And things were very bad on that island. Cut off from the rest of the world, test subjects were quarantined against their wills until the results could be studied more. And things got worse. The first sign was an intense fever, then came the hallucinations, and soon after, death.

The scientists mourned the loss of their perfect cure to death and went back to the drawing board. And everyone thought that it was over, that that was it, the end result, death. But it wasn't. The dead bodies were dumped in the basement, forgotten by all except the person waiting to cremate them. He never got the order. So the bodies, rotting and decaying, were left down there, way below the ground, only the old cremator watching over them. But inside, inside those dead bodies, up at the stem of the brain, something was happening, something was tingling. They were alive and they were hungry.

No one on the island survived.

And the owner of the island, the owner of the major drug corporation, Cur(i)e, decided that the best option, the safest option, the option that would save his skin, was to bomb the island and destroy all evidence of it ever existing, of project Playing God ever existing. With that single action, the "cure", something actually living in of itself, was released into the air, dispersing out around the world. And no one was the wiser.

Except that little girl with brown hair and brown eyes, filled with the hope of her father coming back home to her. And that little girl grew into a bitter adult, a realist. So when the outbreaks started popping up around the world, she was ready. Twenty one years old and already one of the most renowned in the field of science, she said goodbye to the world that she knew and locked herself into her newly built, fully sustainable lab. And she stays there, in her lab, only occasionally going out to collect samples and data. And she searches for a cure, for the answers to the questions that plague her. She re-watches the transmissions from her father, hoping yet knowing there is none.


End file.
